On-Demand, customized women’s apparel rapidly, ethically and sustainably produced in the USA

Background

From 2017-2020 I was the founder and CEO of Altress, an apparel technology, venture backed startup. Altress was founded to combat the environmental detriment, the lack of customization and fit issues within the apparel industry.

Altress was an apparel design and manufacturing company with our own factory capable of manufacturing small batch and customizable apparel in 10-12 business days. With our customization capabilities, we were also developing a fit technology to bi-size apparel (explanation later).

I designed and developed the responsive D2C customization platform for Altress. The Altress platform had 8 colors, 13 tops and 10 bottoms giving Altress the ability to rapidly manufacture and deliver over 10,000 different permutations of design to our D2C customers with zero inventory, creating a manufacturing model that better addressed customers’ needs and was more capital efficient / less wasteful.

Here is my story.

Product designer

  • UX design

  • Product design

  • Visual design

  • Visual and brand identity

  • Graphic design

  • UX research

  • Development handoff and implementation

  • Quality assurance (QA) and user acceptance testing (UTA)

Context

Fashion technology startup

Client

Altress Inc.

Tools

My role

Illustrator

Sketch

Photoshop

Shopify

Product owner

  • Business strategy

  • Sales strategy

  • Marketing Strategy

About

In this UX designer case study, we will explore the design considerations for the Altress customization platform. Altress was founded to create a more sustainable apparel business with on-demand manufacturing, to solve user fit issues with garment bi-sizing (explained later), and to fulfill users’ desire to customize garments.

Problem

Women need a way to shop for affordable, customized dresses that are ethically and sustainably produced because apparel brands manufacture garments using environmentally detrimental manufacturing practices and made for one particular body shape and the brand’s (rather than customers’) design preferences.

We will know this to be true when our customers can purchase and quickly receive affordable dresses that are customized in regards to style and fit and made using sustainable and ethical manufacturing practices.

Solution

Altress’ responsive web app had a fun and easy-to-use customization platform that empowered women to design superior-quality dresses that fit their unique style and body type at a compelling price and 10-12 business day delivery.

Altress’ fast, scalable, on-demand apparel supply chain reduces the environmental impact of apparel manufacturing and delivers customized / better fitting apparel to consumers with rapid speed.

How it works

Use our builder to design your dress

Demo

01. Discover / Understand

From my research and 15 years leading the creative direction and design of apparel brands, I found that consumers were increasingly demanding eco-friendly fashion options while also seeking garments that fit their unique body shape, size and personal style. Existing brands, technologies and manufacturing processes lacked the capability to adequately address these consumer preferences.

Market research

The apparel industry is wasteful

of all apparel produced is incinerated or goes into land fills within 12 months¹

the annual cost of “dead inventory” for US. retailers²

There is a fit issue

Apparel is made to fit a single person / body shape (the fit model) and then the patterns are graded up into additional sizes based on the measurement ratios of this person. This leads to apparel not fitting a wide variety of body shapes.

of women find they are different sizes on top and bottom

of women are not the hourglass body shape that designers design into³

of returns are due to poor fit (4)

Customizaion is gaining more traction

would be more loyal to brands that gave them them the ability to customize their clothing (5)

the projected growth of the customized apparel market between 2023-2028 with an 8.04% CAGR (6)

02. Define

Target audience

During my ~15 years in the fashion industry, I was the designer and creative director for dress brands like Nicole Miller and Karl Lagerfeld Paris. My expertise was knowing the preferences and desires of my target demographic and designing with their concerns in mind. My target audience was determined from my experience and was validated through social media marketing.

  • Women

  • Ages 24-35 (validated via social media marketing)

  • Urban professionals

  • have disposable income yet have no desire to overspend

  • want high quality dresses at a compelling price point

  • attracted to brands that offer the value propositions of sustainability, better fit and customization

  • are comfortable with online apparel shopping and is easily reached my social media marketing

Occasion / End uses

Based on the typical social activities of our target demographic (going out with friends or on dates, to the office and then out after work, to networking events, to weddings, to charity events, etc.) the initial target end-uses or categories for the designs:

  • Cocktail

  • Desk-to-Dinner

  • Evening - Gown Length

  • Little Black Dress

  • Bridesmaids

  • The Curve Edit - Styles recommended for sizes 14-18

  • The White Edit - Bridal events such as reception dresses and “cut-the-cake” styles

  • Formals & Soirees

Customer pain points

“I can’t find the dress style I want”

 I want to be able to customize the design and style of my dress because I can never find the design I am looking for.

“I can’t find apparel that fits correctly”

I want to be able to customize the fit and sizing of my dress because I am different sizes on my top and bottom. 

“I struggle to find dresses suited for my body type”

I want to be able to customize the design of my dress because I struggle to find styles that work for my body type

Women’s typical style preferences based on their body shape:

“Bra Friendly” - Larger busted women tend to look for dresses which have wider shoulder straps and higher backs in order to conceal a bra.
“Sleeve Coverage” - Women who dislike their arms tend to look for dresses with sleeve coverage.
“Tummy Friendly” - Women wanting to conceal their midsection tend to look for styles that camoflogue such as peplums, gatherings etc.

“I need guidance and direction when shopping”

When shopping, I either want inspiration or suggestions for dresses and I would not feel comfortable customizing a dress that is appropriate for an occasion or that will look good.

03. Ideate

Based on the users’ needs, I developed a feature list as well as user stories and journey flows to understand and visualize what pages needed in the app for my user to achieve their goals.

Feature list

User stories / user flows

04. Develop / Design

The development phase involved sketching, wire-framing, and iterating to create a prototype to soft launch the brand and test the prototype. I worked alongside a development team to work within the Shopify framework and edit a template to create the Altress customization platform. The goal was to create a fun and interactive customization platform using what we called the “Cher’s closet model” from the millenial cult classic movie, Clueless.

Initial low-fidelity

Below is the initial low-fidelity wireframe I made using Adobe Illustrator for the initial meeting with the development team. In this meeting the development team gave me some parameters / limitations within Shopify and suggestions of how to design within platform. I explained my manufacturing process and what was needed to integrate the patterning systems into the Shopify backend for seamless fulfillment of orders.

Mid-fidelity prototype for testing

After many many iterations a lot of work, which included photographing garments on an avatar with green screen and CADing all tops and skirts into the 8 available colors, an initial prototype was created for testing. On the right of the screen, the style names, colors and filters were displayed in vertical list form. Although images of the styles would have been ideal for the style selection process, timing and funds limited our team to have to proceed with soft launching and testing the product to gain initial feedback and generate revenue.

05. Test

I conducted 5 in person trunk shows where we observed users navigating through the platform to design their dresses and place orders.

Overall, the response was positive. People found the customizer fun and interactive they loved the available dress styles and filters.

As suspected, the feedback and observations were that users were confused by the style names of the different bodices and skirts and would prefer for images of the styles to be incorporated into the builder.

06. Refine

After receiving user feedback, the major refinements were

adding images of the style options to the builder

adding style descriptions that appear with hovering over “i” next to each picture

displaying all options in a horizontal rather than vertical list

creating a way to expand to see more top and skirt style options

creating a filter drop down and display of selected filters

07. Deliver

Desktop - Customization page

Mobile - Customization page

Desktop - Cart

Mobile - Cart

Desktop - Suggested styles - List of collections

Mobile - Suggested styles - List of collections

08. Learnings / Next steps

The initial prototype for Altress displayed the style options for users in written list form rather that images. Though I was disappointed that we ran out of funds and could not display the style options as images, I learned that waiting perfection can hinder progress and that it was best to proceed with testing to gain additional insights to better refine the product in the future.

Next steps

The MVP Altress platform was constructed to enable users to select different styles and colors for their tops and skirts. In the next version, users will be able to bi-size (select different sizes for their tops and skirts) as well as use a fit-finder to assist in determining their sizes.

Future capabilities that were kept in mind while designing and engineering the builder:

  • Bi-size capabilities in version 2.0 (designing / building the platform knowing that we will need the ability to allow customers to select different sizes for tops and bottoms).

  • Use of a fit-finder to estimate the users size of a top pattern and skirt pattern for future bi-sizing capability

  • Ability to visualize style combinations on aviators with different body shapes / sizes to make the brand more inclusive and appealing to women of all body types

  • The patterns must be compatible with laser cutters in preparation to scale the business for automated pattern cutting.

Citations

  1. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/fashion/fashion-second-biggest-polluter-fake-news.html

  2. https://www.businessoffashion.com/opinions/retail/the-cost-of-dead-inventory-retails-dirty-little-secret/

  3. https://stylecaster.com/lifestyle/health-fitness/205409/how-womens-bodies-change-with-age/

  4. https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2016/06/113662/body-labs-clothing-sizing-fit-survey

  5. Monitor Data sited in Salfino, Catherine. (January 19th, 2017). Quest for Speed and Customization Forces Re-imagined Supply Chains. Sourcingjournalonline.com. Retrieved from https://sourcingjournalonline.com/quest-speed-customization-forces-re-imagined-supply-chains/

  6. https://www.technavio.com/report/custom-apparel-market-industry-analysis

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